Film Title/Year/Director/Length/Studio, Setting (or
Time Period) and Brief Description

Title Screens

El Dorado (1966)
d. Howard Hawks, 126 minutes, Paramount Pictures

In
the frontier town of El Dorado, during the Civil War

Considered director Hawks' first derivative film (or
remake) of Rio Bravo (1958), followed by another remake Rio
Lobo (1970).

John Wayne starred as gunfighter Cole Thornton, who
was in town to reunite with old friend J. P. Harrah (Robert Mitchum).
Thornton had been summoned by evil wealthy landbaron-rancher Bart
Jason (Ed Asner) to drive off the rival family of struggling patriarch
Kevin MacDonald (R. G. Armstrong) to acquire his water and land.
Thornton refused the job, then was ambushed when returning to town
from the ranch by MacDonald's son Luke (Johnny Crawford) standing
guard. He reflexively fired back and one of his bullets wounded Luke
in the gut, and then to his surprise, Luke suicidally shot himself.

When Thornton brought the body back to the Jason ranch,
before he could explain himself, he was shot by feisty daughter Joey
(or Josephine) (Michele Carey), and the bullet lodged dangerously
near Thornton's spine. He left town for treatment in the city, although
remained partially paralyzed.

The story shifted to about a year later,
with Thornton returning to El Dorado with a new young buddy/drifter
nicknamed Mississippi (or Alan Bourdillion Traherne) (James Caan),
a knife-thrower. In town, he met Jason's new hired gun, Nelse McLeod
(Christopher George), and learned that friend J.P. had become an
alcoholic, after being jilted by a dance-hall girl. Efforts were
extended to restore J.P.'s self-respect and cure him of his drinking
problem.

After some power struggles in town in an attempt to
restore peace, the film concluded with the disabled trio in a showdown,
joined by grizzled deputy sheriff Bull (Arthur Hunnicutt). Right-hand
paralyzed Thornton, semi-crippled and leg-wounded J.P., and concussion-suffering
Mississippi killed off Jason, Nelse, and the hired gang, and then
settled in town.

In this well-known and most famous
operatic classic, "The
Man with No Name" was
now known as Joe or Blondie (Rawhide TV actor Clint Eastwood)
- or the "Good" one -
a laconic, lone, enigmatic drifter with his familiar poncho. [This
third film appeared to be a prequel to the other two films, because
it had a Civil War setting previous to the other films, and because
Blondie acquired his trademark serape near the end of
the film from a dying soldier to whom he lent a last cigarette.]

The other two individuals were: Lee Van Cleef's Bad
(or Angel Eyes) or Setenza, a bounty hunter and sadistic hired killer,
and Eli Wallach's Ugly (or Tuco Ramirez), a Mexican bandit. The three
greedy treasure hunters were searching for a cashbox of $200,000
worth of lost or stolen Confederate gold buried in an unmarked grave
in Sad Hill Cemetery.

In the final gunfight, the stranger
shot and killed Setenza but spared Tuco and left him his share of
the money, but first he had to escape the rope around his neck. Before
he rode off, the stranger shot through the rope, leaving Tuco in
the middle of nowhere with gold coins - but without a horse.

Although Fardan had an opportunity to kill Raza,
Maria interceded and saved him. It was clear that Maria was Raza's
willing mistress. Ruthless rancher Grant had acquired Maria for
an arranged marriage, but she had escaped and returned to lover
Raza in his desert stronghold in Mexico.

At the border to claim
their reward in the film's conclusion, the professionals turned
over a wounded Raza and Maria to Grant, then changed their minds
and freed the two. The final dialogue was priceless: Grant called
Fardan a bastard, to which Fardan retorted: "Yes,
sir, in my case an accident of birth. But you, sir, you are a self-made
man."

A
trek across a Southwestern desert, to the town of Cross Tree, and then
continuing on to the town of Kingsley

This low-budget B-movie, considered one of the first
off-beat, stylized existential 'acid westerns,' was never released
theatrically. It was an arthouse-type road-quest film that finally
found a cult audience after being released to TV in 1968, and after
actor Jack Nicholson came to fame.

Universally, viewers were puzzled
by its strange ending. It has been conjectured that the
western was about the JFK assassination and that the ending was about
the capture of Lee Harvey Oswald.

The film opened in a mining camp,
where scruffy, grizzled ex-bounty hunter Willett Gashade (Warren
Oates) with a price on his head, was reuniting with his look-alike
brother Coin Gashade (also Warren Oates) who was now missing, his
foolish cohort Coley Boyard (Will Hutchins), and his friend Leland
Drum (B.J. Merholz). Willett and Coley were hired
for $1,000 to escort a mysterious, enigmatic nameless woman (Millie
Perkins) to a town across the desert called Kingsley.

Paranoia soon
set in, as the two suspected that the empowered woman was leaving
clues for her cocky, black-clad, leather-vested menacing hired gun
Billy Spear (Jack Nicholson) who seemed to be following her to cash
in. The identity of the man the two were helping to hunt down was
unclear, as was the motive for the hunt (there was only a brief mention
of gravely injured (or killed) people in town, including maybe a
child).

During their unusual doomed trek in the harsh desert
climate when they ran out of water, Coley was shot dead by Spear,
and all of their horses died. Gashade found an opportunity to wrestle
with and attack Spear and crush his gun-shooting hand with a rock.
And then on the side of a rock formation, the woman seemed to locate
her prey - both individuals exchanged rapid gun-fire
and killed each other. When Gashade came upon the dead man, he spoke
the name "Coin," realizing
that the corpse belonged to his twin brother. Spear continued
to be delirious in the hot sun from sunstroke.

Hombre (1967)
d. Martin Ritt, 111 minutes, 20th Century Fox

Set
in late 19th-century eastern Arizona, on a stagecoach bound for Bisbee

A revisionist, liberal-minded western with minor amounts
of dialogue - with the theme of racial prejudice and injustice against
outcast Native Americans. A story with some similarities to John
Ford's Stagecoach (1939).

With Paul Newman starring as John
Russell, an Apache-raised white man on a reservation. He traded an
inherited boarding-house from his adoptive father for a herd of horses,
then took a stagecoach ride out of town with others back to the Indian
reservation (he was forced to sit on top, not with the others).

During the journey, the coach was robbed by Grimes'
gang of gunmen, knowing that Favor had embezzled $12,000 from US
government funds intended for Indian beef contracts, and Audra was
taken as hostage. During the robbery, Russell shot and killed two
outlaws and retrieved the sack of money, and then led the group to
seek refuge in an abandoned mining cabin.

The next day, Russell refused
to give the outlaws the sack of money in exchange for Audra. Instead,
with a last-minute fatalistic and doomed decision, he faced and gunned
down all the bandits while trying to rescue Audra (staked out to
die in the sun), but nobly died in the process.

Once Upon a Time in the West (1968,
It.) (aka C'era Una Volta il West)
d. Sergio Leone, 145 minutes, Paramount Pictures

At
the desert homestead of Sweetwater and the surroundings

After the success of his earlier "spaghetti westerns,"
Leone was given a bigger budget from a Hollywood studio, and bigger-name
stars for his revisionist revenge western. It was filmed in both Spain
and Monument Valley (US).

Its opening has been justly celebrated -
a tense standoff at noon in the midday sun between three gunmen at
a train station, marked by only exaggerated sound effects, wide closeups,
and the arrival of the train with a harmonica-playing killer (Charles
Bronson).

The plot was about a beautiful widow, ex New Orleans
prostitute Jill McBain (Claudia Cardinale), who arrived at her Sweetwater
homestead in the desert, where her new husband, local businessman Brett
McBain and his three children had been massacred (due to a railroad
dispute). The cold-blooded and sadistic killer was not wily outlaw
Cheyenne (Jason Robards, Jr.), but blue-eyed railroad company employee
Frank (Henry Fonda in an about-face role), taking orders from sickly
railroad tycoon Morton, aka "Mr.
Choo Choo" (Gabriel
Ferzetti).

Jill received help from the mysterious harmonica-playing
stranger (who was seeking revenge against Frank) and protector Cheyenne
after the brutal killings, to thwart efforts of others to take her
inherited strategic plot of land.

Set
in the late 1890s Wyoming, with the 'Hole in the Wall' Gang and the
early 1900s, in New York, and then in Bolivia

A light-hearted, entertaining, fast-paced, action-comic,
revisionistic western set at the turn of the century, with Burt Bacharach's
soundtrack highlighted by "Raindrops
Keep Falling on My Head."

Loosely based on the
two charismatic, anti-hero title characters: Butch Cassidy (Paul
Newman) (alias Robert LeRoy Parker) and the Sundance Kid (Robert
Redford) (alias Harry Longabaugh), buddy-members of the Hole-in-the-Wall
gang.

In the early 1900s, they had come toward
the tail-end of a long stream of bank/train robbers and highwaymen
in the 19th century. The two were relentlessly
pursued by authorities, led by renowned Indian tracker "Lord
Baltimore" and relentless lawman Joe LeFors, paid for by Union
Pacific head E. H. Harriman.

To make their escape, the
train-robbing outlaws fled to Bolivia (after a brief stopover in
New York City) with the Kid's schoolteacher-lover Etta Place (Katharine
Ross) - hoping to find better luck. A deadly Brazilian posse surrounded
them, leading to their violent freeze-framed deaths.

True Grit (1969)
d. Henry Hathaway, 128 minutes, Paramount Pictures

Set
in 1878 in Yell County, Arkansas and then across the
border in Indian territory

Known as being the only film to bring John Wayne a
Best Actor Oscar (a sentimental honor for his many years of western
movie-making), in the role of a pot-bellied, aging, one-eyed, cantankerous
marshal. Wayne reprised his role as U.S. Marshal Reuben J. "Rooster"
Cogburn in a sequel, Rooster
Cogburn (1975) opposite Katharine Hepburn.

The film was remade as True Grit (2010) by
the Coen Brothers.

The film's plot was about headstrong 14-year-old
Mattie Ross (Kim Darby), who hired the gruff old Cogburn to find
fugitive Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey) and avenge the death of her father
Frank Ross. Also tracking Chaney in Indian territory was $1,500 reward-seeking
Texas Ranger La Boeuf (Glen Campbell in his first major big-screen
role). Chaney's gang-members included leader Ned Pepper (Robert Duvall)
and two horse thieves Quincy (Jeremy Slate), and Moon (Dennis Hopper).

With Mattie joining Cogburn and La Boeuf, the trio
tracked Chaney across the border to Pepper's hideout where a deadly
shootout occurred, but Pepper escaped. Later during their pursuit
when Mattie was taken hostage by Chaney himself, she was able to
shoot the outlaw and wound him, while Cogburn (who was himself wounded)
and La Boeuf finished off Pepper.

In another confrontation with Chaney,
Mattie wounded him again (and Cogburn killed him) although La Boeuf
was struck on the head with a rock and mortally wounded. A rattlesnake
bite almost cost Mattie's life, but Cogburn sped with her on horseback
to a physician who saved her life. Later, she promised him that he
could be buried next to her family's cemetery plot after his death.

One of the most controversial westerns of its time,
due to director/co-writer
Sam Peckinpah's unrelenting, graphically-brutal, slow-motion violence
and savagely-explicit carnage. It was hailed for its
truly realistic and reinterpreted vision of the dying West in the
early 20th century. At the time, it was considered
a veiled criticism of the Vietnam War.

The film
opened with an impressive botched bank robbery and ambush, introducing
its unrelenting, bleak tale of a group of aging, scroungy outlaws (the
'wild bunch'). They were bound by a private code of honor, camaraderie
and friendship, but at odds with the society of 1913. The lone band
of men were led by Pike Bishop (William Holden), who was joined by
second in command Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine), brothers Lyle
and Tector Gorch (Warren Oates and Ben Johnson), and Sykes (Edmond
O'Brien).

They had come to the end of the line after taking flight
to Mexico. They were no longer living under the same rules in the Old
West. They were relentlessly stalked by inept bounty hunters, one
of whom was Pike's former friend Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan), who would
rather side with the outlaws if it weren't for the threat of being
sent back to Yuma Prison.

In the bloody conclusion, the Wild Bunch
faced an over-the-top massacre at the hands of a corrupt and malicious
South American General Mapache (Emilio Fernandez) and his guerrilla
army during the Mexican Revolution, when Angel (Jaime Sanchez) jeopardized
their livelihood.